Day Twenty-eight: July 7
Homeward bound, today I drove from Taos to Amarillo. The drive was pretty for the first hour or two, then it came down out of the mountains and into the flat plains that I’ll be in the rest of the way.
I ave only one new picture today, but with the last leg of the journey ahead of me, I’m looking back at all the places I’ve been over the last month. I could probably just close out this journal series now, but my sense of completeness demands that I carry it through until I’m home tomorrow. Today, a look back at where I’ve been. Tomorrow, I’ll wrap things up with some miscellaneous bits and pieces that didn’t quite make it into the previous journal entries.
When I was driving the dirt round around Canyons of the Ancients a couple of days ago, it occurred to me that this was very like the way visitors used to see the National Parks. In the 1920s it was very popular for families to spend a whole summer taking the “Grand Circle tour” of the parks that then existed, bouncing along in flimsy Model-T cars along dirt roads that were lucky if they were in as good a shape as the four-wheel-drive-only path I was following. I’ve just spent a month doing my own version, both shorter and more comfortable but still mainly the same thing, of the way people visited the parks a hundred years ago.
Look at where all I’ve been…
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Charles Goodnight’s house near Palo Duro canyon. I plan to revisit his gravesite tomorrow and see if I can tie on that bandana I didn’t place on the outbound trip. |
| Capulin Volcano National Monument, the unplanned destination I onl saw because I passed its signpost on the road. |  |
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Garden of the Gods at Colorado Springs. Not too different from what I’d see on a larger scale at Arches. |
| Pike’s Peak. |  |
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Rocky Mountain National Park. |
| Dinosaur National Monument, which surprised me with a couple of beautiful hikes and a dinosaur femur still in the cliff, despite the closure of its museum. |  |
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Yellowstone National Park. The National Park, really. The place so spectacular that it prompted the members of the Washburn-Langford expedition in 1870 to come up with the whole national park concept, while sitting around a campfire near Old Faithful. (I’ve got a book of the expedition diaries— not with me or I’d quote it directly— and the entry for the night someone said “This must be preserved” sends a chill down your spine. So much came from that thought.) |
| Bryce Canyon National Park |  |
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Zion National Park |
| Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, another unexpected treat that came from trusting a road sign over my car’s GPS. |  |
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Capitol Reef National Park |
| Canyonlands National Park. |  |
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Arches National Park. |
| Mesa Verde National Park. |  |
And today, one final destination, though only briefly. Getting an early start to my drive today, I arrived earlier than check-in time for my hotel at Amarillo. So I took a quick detour to see Palo Duro Canyon. I only had time for a quick drive around the state park’s scenic road, but was glad I made the detour.
Palo Duro is the second largest canyon in the United States (taking silver to the Grand Canyon’s gold), and is the place where Charles Goodnight spent so much of his life as a rancher.
Tomorrow, it’s the last drive of the trip as I head for home. Tomorrow’s final journal entry will, as I said above, cover some interesting but miscellaneous tidbits that I couldn’t work into the other posts.
Trip Report:
Miles driven today: 372.4
Total miles so far: 5512.5
